The Spirit House

Once upon a time a woodcutter cut down a tree in the forest but when he did a little green man, a tree Spirit called a Knoll, leapt out of it and complained,
"You have cut down my home. Now I have nowhere to live".
"I'm sorry", said the man, "But what can I do? I've got to earn a living"
But then, however, the tree knoll flew to the mans house and said, "Since he took my house I will take his".
And when the woodcutter came home after a hard days work and, putting his key in its lock tried to unlock his door, the tree knoll poked a finger through the keyhole pushing the key out again.

"You're not coming in", said the tree Spirit, speaking through the keyhole.
Recognizing the Tree Knolls voice, angrilly, the woodcutter banged upon his front door.
"Let me in", he shouted.
"No", said the Knoll, opening a window and sticking his head out, "You cut down my tree so I'm taking your house".
The woodcutter couldn't believe it.
"Locked out of my own house by a tree spirit", he said, "Its outrageous".
And when he looked through the window of his kitchen the woodcutter saw the Knoll sitting in his armchair, reading one of the books from his shelf and smoking his pipe.
"I'm not just going to stay out here and freeze while he's in there enjoying all my comforts", thought the woodcutter and so, climbing up onto the roof of his house, the man decided that he would climb down his chimney
When the Knoll heard the man clambering about on the roof however, he struck his forefinger like a match and lit the fire with its flame.
And the woodcutter was just about to climb down the chimney when, fortunately, white smoke started to billow up out of it.
"What am I going to do?", thought the woodcutter glumly as he climbed down from the roof again, "If I'd have known that cutting down that stupid tree would have led to this I would have left it alone".
Just then however, the woodcutter had an idea and, going to the house of a neigbour he borrowed some tools then he started to make a house.
Not a big house but a small one not much bigger than a dolls house and he painted it bright pretty colours too so that it would look nice.
"Oh well", he shouted to the Knoll when his little house was finished, "If you'd rather live in my old shack than this beautiful knolls house".
"Knolls house?", asked the Spirit, poking a head out of his kitchen window.
"Yes", said the Woodcutter, "As you can see its a home fit for a king".
"Why its beautiful", said the Knoll, smiling with joy and rushing out of the woodcutters house and into the little one.
After that the Knoll always lived in the little house as the woodcutters neighbour and, thankfully, the woodcutter got his own house back.
But theres a lesson to be learned from this story and thats that you should always be careful when you go cutting down trees because you might be taking away someones home, perhaps even that of a tree spirit.